


One

by standalone



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: (my Cosettes are always STEM Cosettes), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Coffee Shops, F/F, Scientist Cosette, Tattoos, Truth or Dare, a little bit of magic, musical inspiration from Dua Lipa, specifically curses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 06:30:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15880464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standalone/pseuds/standalone
Summary: Anyone Cosette kisses falls in love with her. She's pretty sure it's a curse.





	One

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Dua Lipa and Calvin Harris’s deeply enjoyable “[One Kiss](https://youtu.be/DkeiKbqa02g)”
> 
> Thanks to [werebear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/werebear/pseuds/werebear) for taking a look at this one in progress!

It took her way too long to figure out. She’s still embarrassed, really. But then, it’s so hard to know what’s normal. She’s certainly forgiven her very young self—at fourteen, when it was her turn at Truth or Dare, and she was too new to know you always choose Truth, Courfeyrac dared her to kiss three people, any three. She couldn’t have known quite how weird it was that Erin and Aaron and Ross spent the rest of high school swanning over her, making eyes from afar and passing notes from nearby. It wasn’t till graduation that any of the three could catch her eye without blushing.

Maybe she _should_ have known that was weird? But she can’t blame herself for not.

At least it was unsettling enough that she avoided parties for a while—and when she finally yielded to Courf’s pleas that she come to his seventeenth, she always chose Truth, even though her friends gave her constant shit for being such a prude.

But then she got to college, and Day 2 of living there, classes hadn’t even started up yet, this cute boy she’d been chatting with in the dining commons invited her to go see some Bollywood classic at the campus theater, and halfway through, she turned and he was already turning toward her. The kiss was toothily, horrifyingly awkward, both caught at a bad angle. Cosette immediately straightened up in her creaking velvet seat, ready to glue her cringing eyes to the screen for the remaining three hours or whatever of the film, but the guy was gazing at her in absolute rapture.

It took years for her to figure out he didn’t have a single good reason to love her, and years more to make _him_ see it. She was finishing her Masters thesis by the time she and Marius finally split.

Meanwhile, as a favor to Jehan, she was in his friend’s dumb play where her character—an annoyingly cute waitress vying for the heteronormative love of the male lead—swoops in from the wings and plants a giant smacker on him minutes before he’s supposed to marry the leading lady. So then of course she had this loquacious theater nerd theatrically loving her all over campus, leaving her flowers and notes and singing snippets of operettas she’d never heard of because she’s really not much of a theater fan after all; it was just a nice thing to do for a friend—and it struck her as, at least, uncommon. 

But she and Marius were breaking up, and then they were done, and—fuck, this is where it gets embarrassing; by now she was almost 24, and a highly-educated young scientist, and really, really _should_ have fit the pieces together—she’d gotten used to getting some. There were plenty of people, it turned out, happy to oblige. Turns out sometimes a break-up’s a revelation of exactly how many of your acquaintances get themselves off with your image on their mind.

Turns out, also, that there came a night, shortly after the Masters degree was done, when several of these assorted grad-school humans were all at her door, tears in their eyes as they struggled to understand why she didn’t love them as they loved her, and another, Bianca, was texting that Cosette was all she’d ever needed, begging for another chance, and even then, the uncommonness of the situation didn’t solidify until she saw her roommate’s befuddlement when confronted with all these despairing lovers. Only then did the confusion turn to resolve. This was too much.

She moved away. She changed her number. She got a good job at a biochem lab just half an hour from her dad’s home, and found a drafty room in a draftier old housing co-op full of friendly people, and the next several years went by in a peaceful blur of hard work and jocose nights bundled up on the couches with friends.

—

“You’re asexual, right?” one of these friends is asserting now. It’s Musichetta. At least, Cosette is pretty sure it’s Musichetta. It’s very late, and the air in this room is by now thoroughly infused with weed vapor, and there’s a lot of people packed in. So many that the huge living room is, for once, almost too warm.

“Me?” Cosette asks, after what feels like an eternal pause, but which is the very fastest she can force her misaligned brain cells to formulate a response.

“Yeah. It’s your turn. You said Truth. So I’m asking, are you asexual?”

The house is famous for not prying. But this is late and everyone’s wasted, and they all love each other. 

Cosette’s not sure where this question’s coming from. “I’m hell of sexual.”

Musichetta makes a very rude noise of dismissal, like cackling into a paper tube.

“What?” demands Cosette, mere minutes later.

“I bet you anything you haven’t fucked as long as I’ve known you. I’ve never even seen you _with_ anyone. We share a _wall_ , Cosette.”

“We share a wall,” Cosette repeats, frowning in thought. She knows that well enough. Musichetta’s side of the wall tends to be noisy. “But no. ’Chetta. The thing is—just cause I _want_ to doesn’t mean I _can_.”

“Oh, fuck youuuu,” Musichetta says, and Cosette opens her eyes enough to ascertain that her friends are all grinning at her, laughing. “You’re beautiful and, I don’t know, some kind of rocket scientist. There are willing subjects everywhere.”

“But—” Cosette starts. “But, Musichetta, I can’t. When. When I kiss people? It’s the worst.”

“Why?” Musichetta asks, her voice suddenly dropping low, below the music, so that probably just Cosette can hear. 

“Everyone I kiss, they fall in love with me.”

Musichetta’s laugh is a thing of beauty. Right now, though, it’s beautiful like a candlelit ballroom when you’re peering in from out in the snow. 

“Really,” Cosette says, forlorn. Musichetta’s smile drops away. This is Truth, though, and she’s left something out. “I haven’t kissed anyone in years. I have people I... There are people I have sex with. Sometimes. But that’s it.”

The last guy wasn’t exactly _excited_ about calling it quits, but at least he bore it. “This is it, then?” he asked, and Cosette, too giddy at the ease of separation, almost kissed him goodbye. She caught herself. 

“So yeah,” she says defensively. “I have sex. Just not in this house.” Not anything anyone could take seriously.

Musichetta tilts her head. “Huh,” she says, the words a heavy drip of doubt.

The others are all cheering for Bossuet, who is, on a dare from Jehan, who moved in last year, narrating an illustrated history of his life’s tattoos.

“I’m not trying to call you nuts,” she says, “but that shit sounds nuts.”

“I know.” It’s not like Cosette hasn’t had this conversation with herself five million times. 

“Like, you’re saying, if I were to just kiss you, I’d—?” ’Chetta turns for a moment to hoot as Bossuet peels off his shirt, then turns back, frowning. “I kiss everyone. I’ve definitely kissed you.”

“It’s a one-way thing, I think.” Musichetta’s cheek-kisses are fine; her dad’s habit of kissing the top of her head is fine. “But if _I_ kissed _you_.”

“Okaaay.” Musichetta sounds deeply unconvinced. “Having everyone love you sounds kind of amazing.” 

“It’s so bad.” Cosette feels tears in her eyes, and god, her brain is not in the right state to state the complexities of it, but fuck, making someone love you for no reason—it feels criminal. “I hate it. I’m pretty sure it’s a curse.” It’s definitely no kind of blessing.

“Oh, Cosette,” ’Chetta says, drawing her in and petting her hair. Bossuet is down to his boxers. “You deserve to be loved. You should get to have kisses.”

—

The next morning she’s up early to collect data at the shoreline. Usually Roberts does that, but she’s gone on leave till the new year, so Cosette volunteered to pick up this part of the workload. She’s been surprised at how enjoyable it is to be out there on the beaches so early, when it’s just her and a few surfers and dog-walkers, with the gulls screeching and the crabs scuttling under battered rocks.

Just before the onramp from the frontage road to the highway, there’s a little waterfront restaurant. Cosette’s been stopping in there for coffee the last couple weeks while she reviews the morning’s data. No one else will be in the office till nine anyway.

“Coffee?” asks the server. Cosette’s helped herself to one of the vinyl booths that looks over the water. 

“Yes, please. And maybe... hmmm. Some pancakes?”

“You got it.” 

She has flipped open her notes and logged into the laptop when something out the window catches her eye. A surfer in a black and teal wetsuit, riding a long wave almost all the way to shore.

She had a crush on a surfer once. A girl she knew her first year in the co-op, a girl whose long hair frizzed in the sun from the constant salt, who rode over life like she was always borne up from below. Cosette had wanted her for months, had delighted in their tiny conversations and passing glances. She’d wanted to kiss her, and the girl had wanted her back, had leaned toward her at a party with heat sparkling in her eyes, and Cosette had backed the fuck away.

“You okay?” someone asks.

Cosette blinks. She’s been gazing blankly out the window, remembering, and her eyes are wet. 

“Sorry.”

“No prob. Cream?” It’s the server, setting down a steaming mug of coffee.

“Please.”

The server places a tiny steel pitcher beside the mug. “Seriously,” she says, glancing around to confirm the emptiness of the restaurant, then sliding into the bench seat opposite Cosette. “You okay? You look sad.”

“Yeah, I’m sad.”

It’s a startling thing to hear herself say. Sad? How dare she be sad? She has a loving parent and a good home and a life full of love. She tries to shake the thought away. Selfish and ungrateful, the tears come harder.

“You want to say why?”

“Not really.” She doesn’t, and she does. Having told Musichetta last night, it’s like she’s torn the boards off a cave full of bats, and now they’re flapping everywhere, obscuring the opening she used to keep sealed.

There’s a ding.

“Let me get your pancakes.”

The server returns with a heap of them on a brown stoneware plate. Butter runs fetchingly off the top and down the sides. 

“Thanks,” says Cosette, looking up. Her eyes catch the server’s then, and her brain snaps suddenly, arrestingly clear, because this person is fucking gorgeous. Her eyes are a sharp, deep brown, and her dark hair is long and coiled behind her head. Though her posture is reserved, her chin juts forward a little, like she’s a person who doesn't back down.

“You got it. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Wait,” Cosette says.

“Yeah?”

“What’s your name?”

“Éponine?” the server says, pointing to the white-lettered black pin on her apron. Oh. 

“Sorry.”

“No problem. People assume it’s fake anyway.”

“I’m Cosette.” The server’s forearm, when she shakes hands, turns out to be dotted with tiny tattoos. A moon, a skull, some little black birds. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

“I just switched shifts. I get real weekends now.”

There’s a jingle as a family comes in the front door. 

“Excuse me,” Éponine says, heading over to greet them.

—

A few days later, when Cosette comes by the restaurant again, Éponine brings two coffees.

“Why so early?” she asks. “Usually it’s just fishermen getting coffee to go till after seven.”

Cosette points to her notebook. “Tidepool microclimates. I have to enter the data somewhere. The view’s a lot nicer here than in the lab.”

“Good time of year for it.” Éponine nods approvingly at the late-summer morning, blue burning through the fog, out the window. She sits down. “So," she says, passing the cream, "a scientist?" Cosette nods. "I’m gonna be a nurse.”

“Yeah?”

Cosette has never had a restaurant server sit down with her. _Oh shit,_ her brain demands. _Have I kissed her?_ But she's sure that can't be the case. She's very careful now. She'd remember.

“In a couple years,” Éponine, here apparently of her own volition, shrugs. “Bills to pay, keeping my bro and sis fed and all. The school’s been really cool about letting me take just a class or two a semester.”

“Why nursing?”

“Cause I want to make _money_.” She takes a gulp of coffee and unhunches herself. “And—god knows why—people trust me with their bodies. My friends still make me give them their tattoos, even now that they can afford better.” Her glance sweeps down her own bare forearms, over the thumb with its miniature quiver of arrows, and up to pause on Cosette. “My parents”—there’s a half-second of hesitation, and Cosette realizes these are levels, going deeper, saying more—“they did a lot of shit to make the world worse. I’d like to undo some of that. Karmically.”

Cosette nods, her own plain hands wrapping tighter around the glazed ceramic so she doesn’t embarrass herself by reaching out to touch. “You know that’s not on you, right?” She doesn’t know this woman, but she’s always been ready to go deep fast. It’s why a co-op works for her, and why all her best friendships were watered with early tears.

Éponine’s eyes bore into her. “It isn’t and it is. Being better than them? It gives me purpose.”

Cosette nods. This makes sense to her. Her father has told Cosette that her own late mother wished only for her child to be happy and kind. So she tries.

“Hey, Cosette?” Éponine has not looked away.

“Yeah?”

“Are you an asshole?”

Cosette laughs, startled and delighted by the audacity of the question. “I don’t think so. I try not to be.”

“Okay, question two.”

“What is this? An interrogation?”

“Yes, exactly. I should have said.”

Cosette’s grinning now. How unexpected. “Why?”

“Just a minute. Two: Are you seeing anyone?”

“No?”

“Okay, so the _why_ is, I want to kiss you. A lot. And I’m kind of done kissing people who are assholes.”

Cosette sits, immobile as if this diner has been preserved in lucite for the anthropological studies of humans of the distant future. Across from her, Éponine watches, just as still. Her dark eyes shine. 

“So?” she asks, after some time.

Cosette hasn’t even let herself think about it. For years, looking at people, it’s like she’s shut the door on that part of her brain. She doesn’t think about their lips—their shape, their fullness, the shock of softness they could send shooting through her. 

Éponine has lips. Behind them there are teeth, hard and white, and pink gums, and a tongue, and Cosette, just now letting herself recognize all these parts, starts to blush. Seeing Éponine naked would embarrass her less than this, because _this_ —this is her undoing.

“So. Oh god. So, here’s the thing.” How much can she say? She certainly _cannot_ say that her stomach is lurching over itself from the thought. “I want you to. But...” She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, digging back into the memories that justify what she needs to say. “I can’t kiss you.” 

“ _Can’t_ is a strong word,” Éponine says, interest sparkling.

“It’s going to sound ridiculous. But I can’t.”

“You know I’m going to ask why.”

“I know.” There will be more customers in a minute though, and Cosette needs time. “Can I buy you a drink tonight?”

“You got it. Where?”

—

Cosette’s early, but not as early as Éponine, who’s leaning on the wall next to the entrance. She’s the kind of person who makes jeans and a hoodie look like a high-end fashion choice, not a default. Her hair hangs down now, ends catching in the evening breeze. 

Not sure what to wear, Cosette’s still dressed in the suit she changed into when she got to the office. She hasn’t tried to dress cute since she realized that for her, cute means trouble. Cute means people who want to kiss her.

For half a decade, she’s shut that part of herself down. This, she realizes, is truly, unequivocally sad.

Cosette buys them both drinks—red wine for herself, a pint for Éponine—and they take a corner table. It’s Friday, so it’s going to get crowded, but the night is only beginning. The music thumps quietly through the bar.

“Here’s the thing,” Cosette says again once they’re seated on the high stools. “I can’t kiss you because I can’t kiss anyone.”

“What, like some kind of curse?” Éponine laughs, squinting at her.

“Every person I’ve ever kissed, without fail, has fallen in love with me. Instantly, completely, totally, crazy in love with me.”

“Look at you,” Éponine says, and Cosette has the unusual sense that she means this at far more than a surface level. Éponine’s narrow shoulders shrug ostentatiously. “I’m halfway there already.” 

The blunt shock of that ricocheting through Cosette’s guts, she is impressed with her own mental presence in being able to explain further. “Not with me, though. With some phantom, magical idea of me, all the way, at once.”

“Don’t we always love the _idea_ of someone?”

“But, even strangers. People who barely liked me have kissed me and everything else vanishes for them. A gay man, even. People who were in love with someone else, turned the second my lips touched them.”

“Oh, shit,” Éponine laughs. She stares in wonder. “Shit. You _were_ cursed!”

“Am,” Cosette corrects. “I _am_ cursed.” It’s a state of being, ongoing.

“I mean, you _were_ cursed. By someone. Someone cursed you.”

“Come on.” Cosette shakes her head. 

“My parents—who were super fucked up, but that’s not my point—were all about curses. My dad used to curse anyone who crossed him. Even the mailman when Dad got mad about the bills. My dad’s a fucking monster. But you say everyone you kiss falls in love with you.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” She seems to be weighing this. “What about the other way around? If they kiss you?”

“That doesn’t seem to do anything. If it’s not on the lips.” Suddenly self-conscious about her lips, at which Éponine is looking with a mix of desire and intense curiosity, Cosette lifts her wine glass.

“I’ve heard of this one," Éponine says, and for the second that day, her words render Cosette immobile. _Heard of_ , like it's a real thing, like it's maybe not just Cosette's eternal, solitary burden to bear. "I don’t know how to undo it, but I can look into it.” She looks at Cosette. “So.” Her eyes are fire. “Can I kiss you?”

Cosette’s mouth is, involuntarily, parting. She snaps it shut, horrified.

“Not on the lips,” Éponine clarifies. She stands and steps in front of Cosette. With Cosette on the bar stool, Éponine is just the right height. “Your neck?”

Cosette tilts her head back. “Yes,” she breathes, and Éponine’s soft breath whispers across the curve of skin below her jaw before Éponine’s lips follow. Her mouth is wet and hot, its tugging course across the skin making Cosette moan. 

Cosette’s chest arches up, against Éponine; her knees widen to admit Éponine’s body against her own. 

It’s been so long since someone kissed her.

The moon is on its way out when they stumble free from the club, its music pulsing in her ears. Cosette chose the bar because it’s so close to her co-op. She hoped she might bring Éponine home. It turns out Éponine’s apartment is even closer.

Éponine pushes her down onto the bed, and Cosette works a hand down between them and into Éponine’s unzipped, unbelted jeans. Éponine rubs against her and kisses her ear. She’s lost in it—the way Éponine moves above her, the way her skin feels as Cosette’s fingers press into her. 

Éponine’s mouth on her cheekbone brings her back with a jolt. 

“Oh fuck,” Éponine says, realizing how close she is, “I’m not trying to, I promise. Can you— Would you mind keeping a hand over your mouth, maybe?” Cosette doesn’t mind at all. If anything, it’s a relief to know she won’t slip up either, with Éponine’s warm skin hovering just above her. “God, Cosette.” Éponine kisses along her jaw and down her neck, then sets in on Cosette’s buttons. “God.”

Cosette is laughing and whimpering behind her hand—which maybe doesn’t need to be there _exactly_ this moment, but it’s not like it’s a problem, either, to have some kind of pressure against her mouth while Éponine moans around her nipple as she comes on Cosette’s bending fingers. 

When Cosette’s fingers are free, Éponine moves down the bare skin of Cosette’s torso, leaving kisses and bites along the ribs. She tugs off Cosette’s pants eagerly, then pauses. “I can go down on you, right?”

Cosette laughs out loud and lifts the hand away for a moment. “You mean, does the curse cover my vulva too? Because, no.”

“Good,” says Éponine. It _is_ good. She mouths her way down Cosette’s exposed hipbone, over the lace of the underwear, then pulls the undies off too. Cosette almost envies the profligacy with which Éponine gets to use her mouth—except it’s hard to envy anything that’s bringing you such exultations of pleasure, especially once Éponine’s pointed tongue and teeth slide between her legs and set in to bringing her fiercely, cataclysmically, _off_.

— 

She wakes to the smell of smoke. Not like the house is on fire, she thinks—she hopes—but definitely like something is burning. She’s alone in the bed.

On the living room table, a bundle of herbs is burning smudgily in a metal bowl. Beside it, several jars crowd and an odd assemblage of household objects crowd the surface. It’s just after four in the morning, if the wall clock can be trusted. Below it, sitting cross-legged on the floor in just underpants and a t-shirt, Éponine looks up from her phone.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Éponine confesses. “I had to know.”

“To know?” 

“I think I can undo the curse.”

Cosette had forgotten. How quickly, in Éponine’s arms and bed, she had forgotten.

“You think you can fix me.”

“I think I can. Do you want me to try?”

Of course Cosette says yes.

The procedure starts with her inhaling sweet, thick smoke till her head is swimming, so the rest is kind of a muddle, but it seems to involve balancing in one hand a copper bell and in another several feathers while Éponine dabs her lightly on the ears and scalp and elbows with dots of oil. Then Éponine is saying words—words that are not in a language Cosette recognizes, but that feel vaguely familiar, as if from a long-ago memory or dream—and the lull of her voice is steady and soft, and Cosette is beginning to slump into it when Éponine presses a palm firmly in the middle of Cosette’s forehead and an icy shudder travels through Cosette’s entire body. It’s like her spine is being frozen, vertebra by vertebra, going rigid and sending icy tendrils of cold wrapping through her ribs and organs, freezing her solid. Something hot in her surges, trying to escape, and the cold grabs at it hard, but too late: she feels it shoot upward into her throat where it wriggles as the last bits of ice claim her chest.

Éponine must feel the cold, because she rips her hand away and clutches Cosette to her.

“Fuck,” she says. “Oh fuck, I hope that worked.” Arms under Cosette’s limp ones, she pulls Cosette up onto the couch and bundles her in blankets. “Be right back.”

She reappears a moment later with a cup of something warm. “Drink this,” she says, tilting it into Cosette’s trembling lips. It’s sweet and she can feel it melting a path down her esophagus, past her lungs, into her stomach. Éponine pulls off her shirt and lifts the blankets.

“Is this okay?” she asks.

Cosette is pleased to find that she can speak. “I want to feel your skin on mine.”

Éponine tugs up Cosette’s shirt so that their torsos press together. “Ooh,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “So cold!” Her hard nipples poke into Cosette. It takes Cosette a minute to realize that she’s regaining feeling of her surface.

For a while, Éponine just holds her, Cosette slowly warming back to tingling awareness of her body and herself. Then her hands start to move across Éponine’s back and down, over the curve of her lower back and the rise of her ass.

Éponine grinds into her. 

“Do you feel different?” she asks.

“I felt cold,” Cosette says. “And I felt like something—something was leaving. Was, like, trying to fly out of me. The cold didn’t want to let it go. If that makes sense.”

“Sure?” Éponine says. “I’ve got to figure that was the curse. Did it get out?”

“I think so,” Cosette says dubiously. Now that she’s not so cold, she’s trying to figure out if she feels different than before. Has she changed?

“Good,” Éponine says. “Will you kiss me?”

Cosette stares at her. “Really?” What if it didn’t work?

“I’m already into you, Cosette. I’m willing to take the gamble.”

With Éponine’s long hair tickling her cheek, Cosette looks into her eyes and gives her lips leave to meet Éponine’s. It’s electric and slow—an arc of feeling that spreads through her, curving her body like a bow around this woman atop her. Éponine’s lips tickle wider, then their tongues touch, and fuck, Cosette doesn’t care anymore, she doesn’t care if it didn’t work, because Éponine is kissing her ravenously, like Cosette is every good thing, and it lights Cosette up from within. She’s aflame. There’s a heat burning in her throat, just under the skin where Éponine first kissed her, earlier tonight at the bar, and it’s like diamonds there, sparkling brighter with the intensity of their kisses.

“Wait,” Cosette says, pushing Éponine up just a little. “Are you—” She scrutinizes Éponine’s eyes, which close under the vehemence of the examination. “Are you sure that wasn’t too much?”

“I’m fine,” Éponine says, fingers twitching on Cosette’s upper arms. Her eyes open slowly and meet Cosette’s. They’re bright but guarded. “Really. I think we’re good.”

—

“Truth,” Cosette says weeks later.

“Oh my fucking god,” Musichetta says, flopping backward onto the couch. “We’ve already asked you every single possible thing.”

“But not since _this_ ,” interjects Jehan, his gesturing hand encompassing Cosette and her position draped across Éponine’s lap and the already countless such moments he and they have seen from Cosette since this thing started. 

“Then you do the honors,” ’Chetta says.

“Gladly! Truth, Cosette: Are you in love?”

Around her, Éponine goes rigid. “Whoa, you fuckers don’t hold back.”

Cosette runs her fingers over the arrows on Éponine’s thumb. “I honestly don’t know. I haven’t been, I think, before. So how do you know?”

Bossuet says it’s in a constancy of thought, but Joly disagrees. “It’s sort of like heart palpitations, but more pleasant.” 

Musichetta says, “You know because just thinking about them makes you happy all over. Including in the junk.”

Éponine laughs. She’s convinced ’Chetta can’t get through a conversation without bringing up sex.

Jehan, on the other hand, feels that love comes down to connection. With a dreamy certainty, he says, “When being around them makes you want to be the best parts of yourself.”

“You people are ridiculous,” says Enjolras, who holds that human love is only a hollow shadow of the higher love of a great cause. On the floor, Grantaire makes exaggerated retching noises, then inquires after the Cause’s skill at BJs.

Because it was true and because it provoked discussion from the assorted friends present, Jehan is not at all disappointed in Cosette’s non-answer.

“You’re next,” he tells Éponine. “Truth or Dare?”

“Dare,” Éponine says immediately. Her heart is beating hard, like she’s ready to flee. 

“Make it gentle,” Cosette says sternly to Jehan.

“Have you really never been here for T-or-D yet?” he asks. “It feels like you’ve been here for so long. In a very nice way.”

“So let’s be nice back.”

Jehan’s face reminds her that his “nice” ranges to quite a few extremes. “You can,” he offers.

“Can I dare her to massage my feet?” She knows what she really wants, but needs to work up to it.

“I thought you said gentle!” cackles Musichetta, and Cosette is grateful for the way the laugh lets Éponine loosen up.

“Okay, fine.” She pushes up off Éponine’s lap, because it’s hard to look slyly at someone when you’re supine. “I dare you to tattoo me.”

“Where?” Éponine asks. She doesn’t doubt or question, and Cosette is delighted by this. 

“What will hurt least?”

“Shoulder,” says Bossuet, who knows.

Éponine agrees. Joly gets out his medical kit, Grantaire brings down some India ink. 

She wants Musichetta’s handwriting, tiny, because she loves ’Chetta’s tidy little letters—and as ’Chetta writes the word on her shoulder and she tries to crane her neck around to read it, she knows that's wrong. 

“I won't be able to see!” she objects, sticking out her hand. “Not there. Make it here. “

“Top of the wrist’s gonna hurt like fuck,” Grantaire objects. “And it's hard to hide.” 

Cosette wears a watch to work every day, plus she’s well on her way to Senior Staff Scientist. “Here,” she says decisively, pointing again.

The razor clears away the fine hairs above her carpals. Musichetta’s hand is steady and light with the ballpoint pen.

There’s something unreadable in Éponine’s expression as her gloved hand stretches Cosette’s skin taut. She doesn’t ask _You sure?_ , but Cosette’s pretty sure that’s part of what’s in her eyes. The rest is predatory and overjoyed and consumed. She dips the tip of the sterilized needle into a puddle of ink, and begins.

“You’re going backward,” Cosette points out, mostly to have something to say that’s not “Ow!” as Éponine pushes the needle over and over into the top layers of her skin.

“You want _her_ writing, not mine,” Éponine says, focus unwavering.

When it’s done, Cosette, who has for the last fifteen minutes been resisting the urge to cry, demands that someone go find her some weed. Éponine wipes the wound clean, then gently rubs in ointment. “Look before I cover it,” she says.

Neat as the penmanship posters in her first-grade classrooms, the single curving line spells a word: **one**. 

“Why ‘one’?” asks Éponine that night when they’re lying atop Cosette’s bed with the windows open and the listless breeze making a poor show of cooling their hot bodies.

“It used to be that with one kiss people fell in love with me. I’ve had a couple relationships, but once I figured that out, I realized they didn’t count. But you fixed me, Éponine. So ‘one’ is you.”

There’s a pause while Éponine seems to breathe around this idea before she asks, barely audible, “How’s that?” Cosette, who is very stoned, suddenly feels like the whole room is listening to what she will say.

“You’re my first _real_ relationship,” she says, caressing the strands of Éponine’s hair that cling to her sweaty shoulder. “The first person who gets to choose for themself if they like me. You’re number one.”

Éponine lets out a hard breath. “Okay.” Her smile is broader than Cosette usually sees—and for that reason, seems awry. 

Maybe “one” means “ _the_ one,” she thinks, but this, she is sure, is not a thing she should right at this dripping, intimate, smoke-dulled juncture, say.

—

“No one’s here,” Cosette smiles, pushing her laptop to the side and beaming up at her server. 

She hadn’t realized until she had someone to look forward to seeing in this way, with her stomach thrumming warmly and her fingertips abuzz with the possibility of even a minute’s brief touch, that this was a thing she was missing. Had missed. 

But now she has it. She even wore a super-cute drapey tank top to this morning’s data collection, not because she has to, but because she can. Because she has Éponine who likes her for her, even in her shapeless grungy tidepooling clothes, and so it’s fun to see her eyes bug out at seeing Cosette in something that actually fits. “Care to join me?”

It’s a given, she thinks, even though Éponine only brought one mug over this morning—so she’s startled when Éponine shrinks backward. “I shouldn’t,” Éponine says. Her hunched shoulders look like they’re trembling.

“What's wrong?” Cosette asks. When Éponine finally makes eye contact, it’s clear Cosette was right to ask; she looked wrecked.

“Fuck,” she says. She grabs at the back of her neck, elbow jutting high as she seems to plan out her words, which come out reluctantly, punctuated with long pauses. “I was wrong.” The already warm morning air of the restaurant goes still. The fans swirl uselessly, silently, dumbly. “When I said the curse was gone. I was wrong.”

“So all this time—?” The question trails off. All this time Éponine’s been swallowing it, suppressing it around her, fighting for normalcy while drowning in fake love. “You should have said.” 

“No,” Éponine says decisively. “I think this is real. Under the sugar crust, I know I feel something real and fresh and good. I can't let that go till I know for sure.” 

“But how?” Cosette is floundering. “If it didn’t work before?” 

“I did it wrong. My siblings helped me figure it out.” 

“They know?” 

“ _Someone_ had to lock my phone away from me at nights so I couldn't call you sobbing about how ardently I adore you.” 

The image makes Cosette feel awful—but not just with guilt. With gratitude. With affection. With a consuming desire to deserve this much caring-about. 

Well, hell. This is a possibility Cosette hasn't imagined: If she's not mistaken, this is _love_. 

“I fucked up the timing. It was like four in the morning, right? The moon was down by then. I'm pretty sure I got the rest right, but I forgot that.” Her look is confessional: miserable, and also smitten. “I—Fuck.” She gazing intently at Cosette’s face. “It’s so good to be able to not hide it. Even though I don’t know what’s real, for now, god _damn_ Cosette, looking at you is one of the best things on Earth.”

—

The second time is much like the first, but performed under the risen moon, the cold is sharper and deeper, starting this time in the back of her neck and ringing her throat, trying to trap the curse that yes, she can now feel, pulsing and hot in its writhing struggle to escape the confines of Cosette’s body. When it finally gets free, they both feel it—a sudden blast of heat that fills the humid bedroom and pulls sweat to the surface of their skin, even with Cosette’s bone-deep chill. 

“Wow,” Éponine says. “Guess now I know what to look for.” She looks sharply at Cosette. “That was it, right?”

Cosette wants to say _“How am I supposed to know?,”_ but she thinks it was, and anyway, she can’t talk right now what with the cold that almost paralyzes her. A very small nod will have to suffice.

Hot as coals, Éponine climbs into bed with her and holds her tight till morning.

—

The next day, she walks Cosette to the co-op, and says, “I need you to kiss someone for me.”

“Who?” Cosette asks. She gets why.

“Someone you don’t want to fuck.”

Fortunately, Musichetta’s in the foyer, on her way out. 

“Do me a solid?” Cosette asks, and explains the situation.

Musichetta’s plum-colored lips are soft and embracing, if lips can embrace. The kiss feels like the rest of their friendship, really—warm and dependable and like there’s laughter lurking just below the surface.

Musichetta grins, pulling back. “That was nice,” she says. She rubs her thumb over Cosette’s lips and brings it away smudged with purply lipstick. “But I don’t think we should do it again. I’m pretty sure your girlfriend would murder me.” 

Éponine is, in fact, watching with a fascinating combination of relief and fire in her gaze. 

“You don’t feel like you suddenly love me?” Cosette asks. 

“I love you to bits, darling,” says Musichetta. “But not like that.” Raising an eyebrow at Éponine, who chuckles at just that, knowing what’s coming, she says, “You both know I’ve got that department pretty well covered.” She grabs her purse from the table by the door. “Need anything at the store?” 

Once she’s gone, Éponine hands Cosette her phone. “Call someone from before. Someone you kissed before.” 

Cosette’s reluctant to do it, but she understands why she needs to. 

Daniel picks up after a few rings. 

“Hey! This is Cosette. Remember we did that play together in college?” 

“Oh, whoa! Cosette? It’s so wild you’re calling right now. I was just thinking about you last night, actually? or this morning, maybe? I wanted to apologize.”

“You don’t need—”

“I woke up in the night, like, remembering how I used to follow you around and leave you presents and stuff, and that was just weird and messed up. I honestly don’t understand it.”

“I think—”

“It’s been like some kind of obsession that’s always been there until—until _last night._ And now, it’s gone. I’ve never been like that with anyone, not even my husband, who is the absolute light of my life. I’m just so, so sorry.”

“Please,” Cosette says, “don’t blame yourself.”

She’s not sure what else to say, but Daniel, typically verbose, doesn’t provide her much opportunity to say anything anyway, so that, at least, relieves her of the need.

When she finally gets through good-byes, rolling her eyes, and hangs up, Éponine is smiling at her.

“What?”

“Now that you know it’s not the curse,” Éponine says, “I have to tell you something.”

Cosette looks at her warily. Where’s this going? Her mind fills with the possibilities.

“Cosette, I don't want to lose myself. But I think I want to fall in love with you.”

“Oh?” Cosette smiles back. This is all she needs. “Hold that thought till you've kissed me.”


End file.
